UPCOMING EVENTS

Microsoft today released a new Windows 10 preview with improvements to the Notepad app and Windows Sandbox. The update bumps Windows 10 from build 18850 (made available to testers on March 6) to build 18855. These builds are from the 20H1 branch, which represents the Windows 10 update that will arrive in the first half of next year.

This build is for Windows Insiders who have chosen the Skip Ahead option, which only a small subset of Insiders can opt into. Normally, that would have meant 19H2 builds, since 19H1 hasn’t been released yet, but Microsoft has chosen to really skip ahead this time around. That said, Microsoft isn’t adding new features yet.

The main highlight for this build is actually for the most basic Windows app, but one that I use every day. Notepad now automatically restores unsaved content when Windows restarts after installing updates. That’s great, although it’s crazy we have to wait until 2020 for this.

Windows Sandbox, meanwhile, is a lightweight desktop environment tailored to safely running applications in isolation. It’s where you can run an executable file you’re not sure about or what you might use as a clean installation of Windows without setting up a virtual machine. Any software installed in Windows Sandbox stays only in the sandbox, and once it is closed all its files are deleted.

The Sandbox improvements are the same as in a recent 19H1 build, so you’ll only have to wait until next month for those.

Fixed an issue resulting in preferred region settings getting reset on upgrade in the last few flights.

Fixed an issue resulting in the Chinese version of multiple games not working.

Fixed an issue in memcpy that caused some drivers to hard-hang the system on load; this could manifest as a hang on upgrade, depending on the system.

Fixed an issue from recent builds that could result in monitors being missing from the built-in Color Management application.

Fixed an issue causing Explorer.exe to crash for some Insiders when Jump list content was updated.

Fixed an issue where text scaling values did not persist across upgrades for Win32 applications.

Due to a Narrator reading reliability issue, the “Change how capitalized text is read” feature has been disabled.

Fixed an issue that could cause the touch keyboard to crash when switching from IME-based languages to another language.

This build has seven known issues:

Launching games that use anti-cheat software may trigger a bugcheck (GSOD).

The night light feature still has problems.

When performing Reset this PC and selecting Keep my files on a device that has Reserved Storage enabled, you will need to initiate an extra reboot to ensure Reserved Storage is working again properly.

Some Realtek SD card readers are not functioning properly.

Creative X-Fi sound cards are not functioning properly.

VMware cannot be installed or updated in Windows Insider Preview builds. Hyper-V is a viable alternative.

If you install any of the recent builds from the Skip Ahead and switch to either the Fast ring or the Slow ring, optional content such as enabling developer mode will fail. You will have to remain in the Fast ring to add/install/enable optional content. This is because optional content will only install on builds approved for specific rings.